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In the performance/installation Tipping Point, visitors encounter a large kinetic sculpture, sited on the floor of a darkened room. The mobile comprises various rotating rocker arms, onto which platforms and counterweights are hung. These platforms are occupied by actors whose movements set the mobile rocking; the counterweights consist of a slowly melting iceberg and a black sphere. The people moving on the platforms assume different roles; the weather god plays on an old theatrical machine once used to simulate the sounds of weather such as storms and rain on stage. The meteorologist, placed in the centre of a satellite dish, collects information about tomorrow through various weather instruments. On one platform that has a root system on its underside, someone is swirling through a flag dance, and on a rocky formation in a diorama-like cross-section of the wilds, an orienteer is sitting listening to the weather forecast. The performance is a loop, which completes its cycle every fifteen minutes.

Through its imposing scale and unlikely construction, the sculpture induces a feeling of insecurity, the sense that it could all come crashing down at any second. Like the stressed biosphere, threatened by movements towards irreversible cascades of tipping points, the sculpture teeters on the brink of catastrophe. Will it collapse, or will equilibrium and stability be achieved?

The relationship and balance between human, machine, and climate are a theme that we have worked on throughout our artistic career. Our 1987 performance/installation View – Life in a Mirage, was a living museum featuring tableaus in which the static dioramas were populated by actors carrying out repeated rituals on a loop. In one of the dioramas, a woman sat on a stool throwing bread onto the floor, and during the course of the performance a mountain of breadcrumbs accumulated. Stuffed birds of prey adorned the walls around the woman. In 1994’s The Climate Chambers, the audience themselves became part of the performance as their bodies and senses were activated by various climates portrayed in sculptural spatial forms. Within these, one could experience cold, heat, moisture and wind in a gallery setting that was anything but comfortable. Our ambition was to energise our audience in a sensory and physical ‘total artwork’.

While the performance and the sculptural elements are the focus of our practice, they always form the foundations for discussions around our relationship with nature, the weather and the climate. Tipping Point is a natural evolution of those explorations of how one can use art to portray fleeting natural phenomena and thoughts. The development of Tipping Point began back in 2014; the first version of the work was constructed then, in collaboration with Chalmers University of Technology. The project has since been refined, and along with scientists attached to the Institute for Future Studies in Stockholm, we have worked on their large research project, Climate Ethics and Future Generations. It addresses several contemporary issues in which humanity stands at a crossroads. In this catalogue, three of these scientists have each written a text from the perspective of their respective disciplines: moral philosophy, sociology and climate psychology, in which they set their own thoughts in motion with reference to our sculpture, Tipping Point. Throughout the collaboration we have been influenced by the institute’s research, which has found its way into several elements of the sculpture’s various platforms. The joint effort has been financed by Formas, (a government research council) which made executing this large project possible. We hope that Tipping Point will generate a broader discussion on issues around climate ethics and climate justice.

Bigert & Bergström 2021

Film by Mark Goldsworthy

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